Rates & Barrels - Vlad Jr.'s quiet second half, a 'better' reach rate, and late-season decision-making

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the quieter second-half version of Vlad Jr., Austin Riley’s recent power surge, improving reach rate (O-Swing%), late-season decision-making, John Means and potentially flawed location strategy, before Beer of the Month makes it’s triumphant return. Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Get 50% of a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Edo Saris. It is Monday, August 30th. On this episode, we will talk about Vlad Jr. and some potential adjustments that teams have made while trying to pitch to him over the course of the season that kind of dovetails with some questions about regression overall. So we'll get into that. We will talk about an idea for improving reach rate or O-swing percentage

as we've talked about that stat quite a bit on this show over the course of the last year or so. We're getting into some late-season decision-making now that we're approaching the final month of the fantasy baseball season. And we're going to dust off beer of the month. It's time, you know. It's the end of the month. We've got to get a beer of the month selection in there. So lots of ground to cover, and I want to start just going right at it with the Vlad Jr. question. This came from an email that Nick sent us. And he writes, any insight on how a player starts so hot for months and then becomes cold? Other than a player regresses, what can his slower streak be attributed to? Ground ball rate for Vlad Jr. is higher and he's been colder in Toronto than in Florida and Buffalo.

But why? Are pitchers pitching to him differently? Is the change of park that big of a deal? Is it fatigue? What are the chances he could have a bounce back September? And the same goes for Otani, but he's pitching while hitting and still seems to be hitting for power and stealing bases. So obviously a lot more appeal here than just Vlad Jr. and Otani. But is this just your typical sort of regression case? And within regression, we're always talking about this being a game of adjustments, right? Pitchers are going to try and do different things to you if you're having a level of success like what we saw from both Vlad Jr. and Otani throughout the first half. Yeah, I mean, part of it was the park, I think. It's interesting you mentioned that he's gone colder in Toronto. I think that the park they were playing in Dunedin was very hitter-friendly. So I think that was part of it. He just was in a great hitter-friendly park.

hitter-friendly park. I also think that there's something that Marcus Semmy was telling me about becoming a high fastball hitter. He said that it was an adjustment he made. He said he made it against Aroldis Chapman. He said that he started targeting the top half of the ball on four-seamers because they have that ride. That allowed him to hit the ball flush, hit for power. Once you can hit the high fastball, that's what pitchers are trying to do these days

in large part is do the high fastball with the low breaking ball. Adrian Valtteri said that the high fastball makes, if you start targeting the high fastball, the low breaking ball looks like crap because it looks like it's coming off a totally different plane. It's going totally different direction.

Looks like it's further away. And so plane. It's going totally different direction. Looks like it's further away. And so then you make yourself better at both pitches. So I think that's sort of what happened with Vlad because I see improved slugging percentages on the four seam high in the zone from last year to this year. And then I see an adjustment from pitchers where they have now started throwing him low four seams.

And I think that's something you can see from Walker Bueller, is that a low four seam can be effective if you are facing hitters that have that sort of high four seam strategy. Because a low four seam will be taken for a called strike. Then if you get them swinging at the low four seam, then you can break out the low breaking balls and they swing over the top of the breaking balls again. So that's one thing that some pitchers can fall into is being too obvious with their strategies.

It's all high foreseams. They never throw a low foreseam. You kind of have to start mixing it up that way too otherwise people just uh put you in a box so i i i think that's uh it's such a general story and it's such a um a thing that could happen to anybody that uh i think that it's not something like that means oh we're going to over overvalue Vlad Guerrero Jr. in drafts next year, and he's been figured out and blah, blah, blah. I think it's just part of the sort of back and forth that happens in baseball. Yeah, the normal ebbs and flows of a season. I think we also,

as much as we know that a level like what Vlad Jr. was doing in the first half, that 332, 430, 658 line, we want to believe that he can do that over a full season. There's something about seeing that for an entire year that would just amaze all of us. So in our heads, we're like, well, he's not going to regress that much. And his second half is still good at 270, 356, 447 line. Obviously, that slugging number especially is well below where we'd expect them to be but it's sort of just one of these things where you you can't take any players first half and just assume that it's going to be that good or that bad yeah the on pace four thing never ever it just doesn't it doesn't work like that. I think with Vlad Jr., there will always be that little kernel of doubt when the ground ball rate soars, but I think the way you're describing how he would have been attacking high fastballs does give you a little bit of an understanding of how he might be hitting the top of the ball a little more often right now as pitchers have changed where they're locating fastballs against him. It's interesting too that you brought up Buehler just for a minute. It's kind of a

little side path because he was among the big spin losers since the crackdown back in June. And I was trying to figure out like, how has he been so effective? But yeah, it sounds like a completely different location strategy might be a big part of how he's been able to adjust to not having the same effectiveness of the high fastball that he previously had yeah he also throws wicked hard so that helps um but uh you know there was he once told me something that interesting that i haven't super verified yet um but he said that the dodgers told him that over 94 miles per hour um spin means less because uh there's only so much ride you'll get i think it has to do with like time to the plate you know uh that's something about like moving the mound back, you actually might be able to get more ride out of your fastballs

because there's more time for it to differentiate. Because if you think about it, if you're looking on YouTube, the whole idea of ride is that this is what your brain expects the ball is going to do, and instead it does this. And so the difference between what your brain expects it to do and what it actually does, if you give it more space and move the mound back, will be larger. Right, and you'll have this unintended consequence of moving the mound back and making dominant high spin, high velocity pitchers actually more effective by changing that variable.

Yeah, good luck enforcing the sticky strategy then if that's what they realize. And also, the early numbers out of the league are interesting in that strikeout rate hasn't really gone down. And they're all trying to figure that bit out. But yeah, I think that would be terrible if we moved the mound back and got more strikeouts for it. I talk about this dystopian nightmare where we move the mound back and we put in robo-lumps. And moving the mound back, because of what I'm talking about in terms of giving the ball more

time to move moving the mound back could incentivize pitchers to throw more breaking balls you know what else would could incentivize pitchers to throw more breaking balls is the robo zone because the there's two pitch types that are called the least right now that are called strikes correctly the least and that's the two seamer that comes back to the plate like a front door uh or anything front door so that could be a breaking ball so breaking balls and two seamers that come back to the plate and the other is ones that uh clip the bottom of the zone and like hit the ground or or get caught really close to the ground those two pitches are not caught a lot are not called strikes a lot. And so you see my dystopian nightmare coming together here?

Oh, yeah. It's like every pitcher is Sergio Romo or Rich Hill. Well, when you think about those guys. I kind of like watching those guys, but they don't have great command, and they're always just trying to nip the bottom of the zone or the side of the zone with their breaking balls and i don't know i don't think i want that to be everything i watched no no i don't think that would be the best uh way to go about adjusting things to make the game more watchable like that and i don't think it would lead to a lot fewer

strikeouts actually no i don't think so either but the other side of this too is you know i was thinking about who's crushing in the second half right now like this vlad junior otani like first half amazing players guys that have cooled off a little bit who's turned it around juan soto is near the top of that list i mean he looks like typical juan soto again which i don't think is that much of a surprise. I think the track record he had entering the season for a player his age, it made all the sense in the world that he was going to start hitting. And I think he said home run derby got him back on track. Yeah, and a little bit of the injury hiccup in the beginning of the season

where he had a shoulder thing. Yeah, so I think he's just totally healthy now. Yeah, yeah. So you see some correction going that way. You see guys like Austin Riley. He's been a little bit erratic this year for as good as he's been. It's been a full-on massive step forward and breakout for him. But he's among the best players in the league in the second half of the season.

14 homers now in his last 41 games, driving in runs, scoring runs. I mean, no one's expecting him to hit over 300 in the long run. That's just never really been part of his profile, but I don't think there are any doubts about the power at this point. He's on his way to like a mid-30s sort of home run total this season, and I wonder, is he the kind of player who is going to be overdrafted because of recency bias and because of some of these concerns that crop up especially when the second half is the better of your two halves i feel like a lot of times that's what drives value above where it should go yeah i wanted to say you know oh he really

improved his reach rate right and and and that is good news but he improved it to league average And that is good news. But he improved it to league average. Right? So I don't think I'd buy a 9% walk rate, really. Although league average is, what, 8.5? So not that far off. But I just, it's a little bit aggressive for me. And I could see an alternate reality where like you put the

two worst parts of a season back to back and um and everyone has a completely different opinion of him yeah i mean there was a stretch where it looked like he had cooled off to the point where he could lose playing time again i think it was late first half i want to say it was around june where riley looked like one of those guys that the league had sort of figured out again. Obviously, he's adjusted back and has become one of the Braves' more consistent hitters, and it's been

huge for them given all the losses they've had. It's interesting. A 643 OPS in June where he had a 5% walk rate. Yeah, and the power, I mean, geez, he's the same number of homers in the second half in 41 games as he had in the first half

over 88 games. I think there's going to be probably a little more hype on him than there probably should be just based on the shape of this season. One thing I do like is just there's a consistent barrel ability, right? That's been consistent all three years. He's had a barrel rate over 10%. So Like that's been consistent all three years.

He's had a barrel rate over 10%. So he hits the ball hard when he does. He has that sound. That's something we knew from the first time we heard his batting practice in the AFL. What I do like about the beginning of this season was an emphasis on not reaching, making more contact, having better ABs that didn't always end up in power. So if you can marry those two together, you can have a legit breakout. He's 24. So, you know, he's not necessarily going to get worse when it comes to strikeout rate or walk rate. A lot of these things wouldn't necessarily get worse. In fact, athletically, he has two more

years between him and and when you start you know thinking that things might start going downhill or three years at least so um the one thing that i would say is like if you don't bet on the average if you buy him at like a 260 average next year and 30 plus homers 35 homers then, then I think you can still buy him. But I think you're right. I think people are going to look at the average and think that's totally redoable, and I'm not sure that is. How often do you look at projections this time of year for the rest of the season as maybe a way of getting a sneak preview

of what the slash line might look like and the projection system updates for next year? How different is that projection really going to be? Is it 268,8 334 490 for the bat x for the rest of the season within i would guess five points in average and maybe eight to ten points in obp i would assume that's where the 2022 projection is going to come out yeah uh you know i i i think that basically the the projections are just, they're always rolling and updating, right? The only difference in the offseason is they stop getting new information,

so they sort of freeze it at some point. But I don't think there's going to be a huge difference. In fact, I think that's a great proxy for next year's projections. And if he's treated like he's going to hit 285, 350, 500, then you're probably overpaying for Riley. So it's a good way to get that sneak peek at the second half. You're trying to get ahead on your planning for next season. But thanks a lot for that question, Nick. It's always fun to dig into regression, trying to figure out how exactly it's happening. Because again, we know when things aren't right when things are

too good or too bad we can generally look at projections and go yeah okay this is going to track back this way the underlying process by which it happens that varies pretty wildly i think from player to player let's get to this other question that came in from ned uh he wrote that while catching up on last week's podcast you know made the point about reach rate being the measuring tool for the effectiveness of a team's made the point about reach rate being the measuring tool for the effectiveness of a team's hitting coach. Thinking about reach rate, I wondered whether this play discipline stat could be refined

similarly to how WOBA and WRC Plus attempt to rectify the inherent flaw and how OPS equally values slugging and on-base skills. What if we can use a combination of the location of a specific pitch with possibly its barrel percentage, or maybe its expected run value value to properly weight the value of laying off a pitch millimeters outside the zone versus a 55 footer and then sort by specific locations or radius from the strike zone to see who is an elite zone controller? Or is it something that a large sample size of a full season tends to null out? Would expect to see Juan Soto near the top of this if it became a thing. I think that's a great projection for someone who might be at the top. Thanks for listening, Ned. This is a great question. Because the decision to swing at a pitch outside the zone, it's pretty vague. If you're swinging

at a very competitive pitch that narrowly missed the zone, you probably should have swung at that pitch in some ways because it's almost impossible to tell that it's not a strike but if you are swinging at the 55 footer because you're just hacking wildly those count as the exact same sort of result in terms of how just basic o swing is calculated yeah and i have a stat and juan soto is number one uh there's a there's a stat from Stats Reform called Discipline Plus, of course. And the idea is they scout these hitters and they look at where the hitters have traditionally been successful and then they map their swings against those locations

in which they've been successful. So they give them credit for swinging at pitches that are in those zones that they've been successful and not swinging at pitches where they haven't been successful. That's sort of what you're talking about, right? Yeah.

I mean, I think that's a big part of it. And I think it's interesting that Soto's first on that list. You have the list in front of you, so I was trying to think of who else do we consider to have really good plate discipline? The other person you think is on here is on here. Freddie Freeman?

Joel Trout? I don't know if Trout's not on here because of... No, because of missed time this year. I've got the list. Number two is Brandon Nimmo, dude. Oh, yeah, Nimmo. Sure.

Number three is Dylan Moore, which might be a little surprising based on his strikeout rate, but I think he's barely a major leaguer, and this is his skill. You know what I mean? He's kind of toolsy though. I guess he steals some bases.

Okay, how about this? His contact ability is like a 30. Yes. And you wouldn't normally think that would create a major leaguer but because his discipline is an 80 and he has a couple other skills like defense and speed, that's why he's a

major leaguer. Brandon Belt is fourth. Andrew McCutcheon is fifth. Alex Bregman is sixth. Jake Fraley. There we go. Two Mariners. Maybe they value that.

Chris Taylor. Yandy Diaz. Max Muncy is tenth. Tommy Pham is 11th Mark Kanha, Joe Panik Clint Frazier, I actually bought a share of Clint Frazier because Clint Frazier is on this list and he's on the barrel list

and he had a bad season so that to me makes makes him a buy low for me I don't know that he'll be on the Yankees next year or I don't know that he'll be on the Yankees next year. Or I don't know exactly how I don't foresee the future on where he makes this value a good judgment for me. I'd hate to see him up and down on the Yankees next year. That would be a bad move by me.

But I do think he's a buy low. Yasmany Grandal, Joey Gallo talked to him about this a little bit and he just said it's just been ingrained in him. That's just a skill he has. Buster Posey, Tyler Stevenson, which is a good sign for his ability going forward.

Mookie Betts and Anthony Rendon. That's the top 20. That's a group, I mean, generally of players that are very good. The less proven guys, the Dylan Moores, the Fralies, obviously a little surprising to see them there. But Fraley, I always liked him as a prospect. I think it was James Anderson's rankings that really tipped me off

a few years ago. He's been the prospect of the week for us a couple times, I think. Yeah, at least once and probably maybe like Toro, maybe a two-time selection. But he's weird because he's been old for the level. I think it's in part because of injuries, kind of an unusual path to the big leagues. And this is the first time he's ever really had a regular chance to play in the big leagues. This is something we've gone through with Edward Olivares this season.

We go through this with a ton of guys that sort of get stuck in the in-between. this season. We go through this with a ton of guys that get stuck in the in-between. Even if they're not quad A players, they're stuck in the up and down situation because they don't have a spot to call their own and the team thinks that developing them by playing them every day is better than... Or they just don't value them highly.

Yeah. Now we're starting to get a look at it. It's like an 18.2% walk rate. That's really good for a guy that you wouldn't be certain about as being a decent big league sort of player. He's showing power. He's showing speed. I don't know if he's done enough to prove that he belongs in the Mariners' plans, given the quality of the outfielders they have in that organization. But I think he's shown enough where if there's another team interested

that trades for him, I think they're doing enough where if there's another team interested that trades for him I think they're doing it with the intention of giving him another 400 plus plate appearances to see what happens and I think it's kind of justified yeah and I'm absolutely kicking myself because in that OBP dynasty that 20 team that was rejects I had both Fraley and Toro on my bench forever just trying to nurse them to the big leagues. And just injuries or whatever reason ended up dropping them right before they finally got their chance. I'm just staring at them out of the people's roster. And then I get offers, trade offers with them in it.

I'm like, oh. That's always great. The player you dropped coming back into your inbox as a piece that someone else is trying to trade you that's what you want that aggravates me that made me angry and it shouldn't i mean sunk cost like whatever like you know he has he has the value he has now if i I want him, I should get him. But there's a little part of me that's like, no. So the other guy I want to ask you about from that list is just Tyler Stevenson. K-rate's under 20%. Walk rate is above 10%.

That's been the case for him at just about every minor league stop. I mean, high A back in 2018. He was 21.8% with the K-rate, but still walked 10% of the time. Showed a bit of power. He's 21.8% with the KRA, but still walked 10% of the time, showed a bit of power. He's shown some power already this season. How high is the ceiling? I mean, I think I've hit the ball in the air a little bit more. I could talk myself into a 20 plus home run season from him at some point in the not so distant future. It's just going to take the Reds giving him a larger share of the playing time and giving Tucker Barnhart a bit less.

Yeah, it's funny. You look at this guy and he's got this 5% barrel rate and you say, OK, well, maybe he's just not going to be a power guy. That's what the barrel is telling you. But and then the Maxi V 1066 is not standout. However, he has a really nice home park. Right. And the ground ball rate, if you look at his ground ball rates in the minors this year is the outlier yeah and uh barnhart's contract is a club option for 2022 i mean they might like the way he handles the staff well enough to bring him back and keep those two together but i could just see that playing time shifting more in stevenson's favor because there's a lot in this

profile to like yeah and you know they've been cheap in weird ways before where they didn't sign a shortstop. Nope. It didn't seem to be hurting them too bad. They're doing well. But they've been cheap in weird ways where they could just decide, let's go cheap there. We'll just have some organizational type backup and give Tyler the reign. So yeah, and already he's going to get close to 400 plate appearances

this year anyway because he's played some first base too. Yeah, which actually with universal DH around the corner, there's a little more on the bone there playing time-wise. I'm all in. I think I would expect him to have like a 44% ground ball rate next year and like a 7% barrel rate and like, you know, something like what would be like 22, 24 homers over the full season. just fine. Plenty of run production there too and getting on base as much as he does could be a little higher in the order than a typical catcher so a couple up arrows I think

on Tyler Stevenson after what he's done here in 2021. We have another catcher joining the pool because he was a big part of that trade that sent Max Scherzer and Trey Turner to the Dodgers that of course is Kieber Ruiz who is up for the Nationals now. I don't see Riley Adams

as a big threat to his playing time, so I think we can pretty safely say that Ruiz should have a path to probably start 100 games for the Nats next year, maybe a bit more. And I've always been impressed by him in the minors because the K rates have been low. He's been young for the level everywhere he's played. What should we expect, though, from a power perspective? Because the power we've seen from him in AAA this season is another level above everything he's shown us to this point.

21 homers over 72 AAA games in the Dodgers organization and the Nats organization this season for Ruiz. Yeah, he has the ability right now. ability right now. I think he must have undergone a swing change in the lost 2020 season because he used to hit 45% of his balls on the ground up until 2019. In 2019 in AAA, he hit 49% on the ground.

It's a small sample, but that same year in a bigger sample in AA, 44%. And then he goes, uh, 2020, uh, there's just the ADA play appearances. Nevermind that. But 2021, 50% fly balls in triple A bananas. And he continued that for Washington. Dude, this is a very rare skillset. I need to do this real quick.

Um, I, I know I need to do this real quick. I know I should have done this before the show. I'm sorry, but I'm now going to look at... We've been... I think we've had good ground ball rates mostly this century. So I'm going to use ground ball rate. I'm going to use fly ball rate. I'm going to look at fly ball rate and I'm going to i'm going to look at fly ball rate

and i'm going to look at the uh top guys and fly ball rate and put the strikeout percentage on this because uh cabaret is for um is projected to strike out 12 of the time that's a really low strikeout rate for any player, especially for an actual catcher. But then nobody does that. And then, oh, Barry Bonds does. Oh God.

Okay. I'm going to look for anybody who has below a 15% strikeout rate. And I'm going to start at the top of the fly ball. So Frank Thomas, right? That's, that's a little bit more normal. You know, 55% fly ball rate, 17% strikeout rate.

And he was really good. What I was thinking of was Rod Barajas, you know, 54% fly ball rate, 17% strikeout rate, terrible bad bips, terrible batting averages. That's what I think of guys who hit 50% fly balls. And there's other guys like him. Marcus Thames is on here greg vaughn reese hoskins johnny gomes joey gallo those are the normal guys okay here we go our first one sub 15 darren fletcher he was a catcher too wasn't he i barely barely remember darren fletcher god i

barely remember that guy catcher for the blue jays yeah Catcher for the Blue Jays? Yeah. Catcher for the Blue Jays. And the Expos. I might have put a Darren Fletcher in my bike spokes, which I was not a ruin my baseball cards kind of guy. Joe Creedy. But these all, by the way, all these guys have low batting. Yeah, but I also think that the higher contact rate hitters of that era are just, those are just different players.

They were, they weren't, they were, they weren't trying to do damage quite the same way, or at least they weren't capable of doing damage the same way as hitters. Now with this approach, here's, here's a name that you might like.

Barry bonds. Um, yeah, you don't think they were capable of, of, of what? A lot of those guys, I don't think we're necessarily capable of,

of big power. Joe Creedy is probably a better player than people remember, though. He's a better player than I remember, at least. He had a couple of 20 home run seasons in there. Had a 30 in there, too. Look at these Babibs they're projecting Ruiz for, though. That might have something to do with the fly ball rate. They're projecting him for 260 to 280 Babibs.

Creedy, as a comp, just for a heads up, I think he was 15% or lower with the K rate every year from 03 to 08. His Babib topped out at 271 and bottomed out at 229. So when you hit the ball in the air that much in the big leagues, guys usually go catch it. And what was his batting average like? It was bad, right? And what was his batting average like?

It was bad, right? He was 261, 239, 252, 283, 216, and 248. Well, there is that volatility that I've talked about with Aaron Hill, you know, and Jose Bautista. I've talked about this a little bit. There's a little bit of volatility, I think, when you're a 50% fly ball guy. It's not something I look for and usually like, but you combine it with a 12%out rate which i love uh it's an interesting combo that there haven't been a lot of players

like him he's a little more pull happy with the added power but not extreme to the point where you're worried about that i mean he's a catcher he doesn't run well so some of the minor league babbips are a little bit of an outliers because defensive quality there versus what he's going to be hitting into in the big leagues is different uh yeah so i i don't know like i'm probably i'm probably over the bat projection for him on the average like i get 269 where it comes from but i wouldn't be surprised if long term he's like a 280 285 guy for a couple years at his peak with legit 25 home run power. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's tantalizing. I mean, it's, yeah. As much as the stuff plus and location plus does not like Josiah Gray,

Ruiz, I think, was maybe the big get here. Yeah, they certainly needed the long-term catcher upgrade in the organization to try to see if we can get... I can't really get any... He's only got two batted balls this year. So not really going to get much from that. Seven batted balls in parts of two seasons. I don't even know if we can...

30% barrel rate. Bye, bye, bye. Yeah, he's just going to barrel everything. But would you agree that the ceiling is that of a top five catcher? The likely outcome is at least a top 15 sort of catcher. Probably better ceiling than Tyler Stevenson that we were just talking about. I mean, honestly. Yeah, I think that's fair.

I think most of the time that they were prospects, that would have been probably the way people had them stacked up as well. It's not a cut on Stevenson. That's more praise for Ruiz, by the way. So I think these are two guys that we definitely both like. But exciting times for the Nats to at least bring him up. There was no reason to wait. He clearly has nothing left to prove in the minors at this stage.

Let's talk about some late season decision making. We are trying to chase down some titles. I think you're having a slightly better season than me because by your count, you think you're going to win maybe three leagues this year. If I'm lucky, I could win three. I'm more likely to only win one or two with a bunch

of finishes. I'm ready to run in the cash. It's been an okay, not great year for me, but I think people struggle a lot with late season decision making. What are you turning for in the league? I believe that I'm probably most likely

to win of all of them. It's a four-team race, so it'd certainly be one I don't win. I was struggling just to actually sit down a guy like Eloy Jimenez, who only has two games for the first part of the week to play a much less talented player like I know it's the kind of thing we talk about all the time but when the season's on the line sitting the better player somehow becomes

more difficult I don't know if you had that experience too but I am struggling in a big way to make those types of calls right now yeah to some extent um i'm trying to lobotomize myself a little bit and just use the ras ball uh hitter stream streamer stuff sometimes um just to kind of be like it's also kind of hard sometimes to compare like okay what i got five uh games of you know a top 15 type bat you know or seven games of a lesser bat you know which one should i put in uh those those are really hard decisions to just kind of guess at you know uh so i do like using the the streaming tools that are available to me. And then, you know, the truth is that like streaks don't really exist. You know? We want them to, but they don't.

Yeah. I mean, we talk about adjustments here and, you know, the adjustments I guess exist and people can find a new talent level. But it's probably rarer than we'd like to admit. And, you know, in terms of hot streaks, I think, you know, for pitching, there's been some some stuff, but, you know, I don't even think that's actually a hot streak. You know, there's been some proof that like if your fastball velocity is up, that can be predictive of better results in your next outing. Well, that's not really a streak.

You've actually changed as a player. Your true talent has changed. That's not a streak. A streak is the same person doing the same thing over and over again, and for some reason it turning out the same or turning out different, like turning out good for a while. So I don't know. I don't know if that's semantics or something but in any case um uh you know the only way that a cold streak is actually a real thing is if they're hurt

so i guess i would like look through the kind of rotor wire or rotor world um things and sometimes um it's not like an il stint. Sometimes you look through it and I've noticed this. I talked to Carl's career about this. Sometimes it's the little notes where they just miss one game or something. And those are actually super meaningful. I was just thinking about Tim Anderson as an example. Yeah. I want to see how his numbers look in these last 10 days or so

since this injury has been – well, it's popped up on him a couple of times. Yeah, yeah. I think I benched Tim Anderson in one league. I think he also has like five games this week. And I was like, if he has five games and he misses one of those, or six, maybe he's a six and he misses one and he's five, and six or maybe just six and he's misses one these five and I was like and he's got the sore legs but yeah that was that's what happened across Korea

is like I look through his game log and I was like oh it just says here that you kind of stumbled on your ankle rounding the bases and missed a game and you said that caused a downturn in exit velocity for a month? And he was like, yeah. Yeah, that ankle hurt. So I guess if you're trying to look at a player that you think you should play or whatever, look at their injury history for the last couple weeks. And just look through all the notes and be like, oh, he jammed his shoulder diving back to the bag. Wow, that's weird.

I didn't remember that. Are you looking at something like the savant ex-Woba rolling charts or anything in particular that people can pull up and just visualize to sort of line up a player's recent performance against some of that news? Because with Anderson,

his past 50 plate appearances are below what we've expected. It does sort of sync up to say, Hey, yeah, this actually is a problem for him. That is probably pushing him down to like 60 or 70% of his projection. So when you consider the increased possibility of missed time and the two

days off, right? If you have this nagging injury, you have a day off Monday, you have a day off Thursday, you have a two game series with the pirates in between. You can probably win those two games without Anderson. The White Sox incentive to sit him is much greater

than it is to play him in those matchups. They can give him that rest. That's an interesting thing, too. And then he falls into a three-game week if he's feeling good by Friday, or because they didn't play him Tuesday or Wednesday, they can retro that IL stint if he needs it, get him back sooner later on this month.

I feel like they're going to err clearly on the side of caution with him and I think it is supported by that recent performance dip yeah that's interesting let's see here oh I've got average exit velocity I'm going to go into it

by game I used to do that. See, game is very noisy. I had a rolling, when I did look for these sort of things, I did a rolling 50 ball and play exit velocity, right? So it smoothed it out a little bit, but you still got to see some trends.

And I don't think that exit velocity, average exit velocity is not very good for predicting future success. But what I do think it is, it's a little bit like fastball velocity, right? Doesn't it map pretty close where it's like, that's, it describes your upside. It tells you something about how healthy the guy is.

So unfortunately, game by game, singles numbers is not really useful. I'm going to do by month. It's down against, I don't really want it by pitch group. I want it all pitches. So it's steady, I guess, in August. But I would want a little bit more granular than just the whole month, right? Yeah, I think the whole month is not enough.

Because, geez, August, the beginning of August, the stock off was happening. Things were going great for Tim Anderson earlier this month. Yeah. And he, in terms of a monthly, like he is down off his May and June peaks, but I would want something a little better than this. I think, i think it would be nice if somebody had a rolling sort of 50 ball and play type uh exit velocity thing just to kind of line it up because you can sometimes annotate and be like oh look uh he jammed his shoulder into the base here and then exit velocity went down for like two weeks yeah you know yes i do that really nicely with Soto's season. Oh, I think it would line up very well there because that one is so clear and obvious

that it's a good example, but it's these smaller non-IL situations, I think, that can really throw us. And I think that Correa example that you've mentioned is such a good reminder that just because an injury doesn't actually put a guy on the IL doesn't mean it doesn't impact them for a few weeks or a month or even an entire half i mean i keep wondering about that with xander bogarts and a few players that have been hobbled for a pretty long window this year so anyway i just thought this was interesting because

i've been kicking myself with some of these tough decisions over the last few lineup periods in particular. You don't want to make mistakes, but every decision carries equal weight. It just feels like they carry greater weight this time of year. We had a question come in about John Means and location strategy, which is another recurring topic on the show. And this comes from Trevor. Trevor writes, in watching John Means this year, it seems like he tends to give up hard contact on four seamers at the top on the show. And this comes from Trevor. Trevor writes, in watching John Means this year, it seems like he tends to give up hard contact on four seamers at the top of the zone

in two strike counts that he doesn't quite elevate enough above the zone to induce chases and whiffs. Does your research indicate the same? And if so, is there anything about the shape of his fastball that should caution against that strategy for him? And related, how much say do pitchers have if a team prefers caution against that strategy for him and related how much say do

pitchers have if a team prefers a certain location strategy for them trying to decide if the Orioles coaching might hinder means his future ceiling in making keeper decisions so first part of that question are you seeing what Trevor is actually witnessing with John Means. Yeah, I took a look at the Fangraphs heat charts for his fastball this year, and he's giving up basically like a 200 ISO at the top of the zone. And even one ball, like even that first sliver above the zone, he's giving up a lot of power, a lot of power. So I think, I think maybe he needs to go another sliver beyond. He needs to go from right above the zone to above the zone. But generally also, when I look at this heat map,

he also gives up a fair amount of contact, hard contact, at the bottom of the zone. And I think that some part of it is just his ballpark. and then his fastball by stuff is about average um so it's like an average pitch in a really tough park the location plus on the pitch is 99.7 so basically an average fastball uh in a really tough park uh and and so that part i think in a really tough park. And so that part, I think, is a little bit less interesting than the other part of the question,

which I think it is a fascinating sort of look into this. There's a person, Michael Fisher, who runs a place called Codify. And Codify gives you basically like a GG plot, like a heat map of how the batter does against certain pitch types and uh it's been normalized for your pitch types right so if you've got a rising four seamer you get a different heat map for your four seam than if you have uh maybe a power a straighter one or more of a a two seam type type movement on that four-seam.

So somewhat normalized for pitch-type movement, and then it tells you the best locations for this hitter and sort of a heat map. Most teams have that. And behind the scenes, I've heard grumbling from teams being like, like, why are they paying this guy? We have that. Use our stuff, please. But other teams have said, whatever makes them feel confident. The confidence is actually just as important as getting the location exactly right. So they're okay with it. But the last part that I want to add here is we're doing the validation for Stuff Plus and Pitching Plus and Location Plus.

And we have this really interesting findings keep coming out of this. And one of them was that on the per-pitched level, location is more important than stuff for outcomes. Right? So, getting... We've heard this before about sliders, that location might be more important than slider stuff. But in fact, it's true for all pitches,

that hitting the right spot is more important for that pitch than the shape that it used to get there however stuff is stickier year to year and part of that i think is what's at root here and the question is your pitching coach changes from year to year your organization might change from year to year and then you have these sort of micro health problems that we're just talking about with the, with the, uh, with the hitters that may not change your velocity, but change your ability to hit the spot that you want. Right. Um, and so basically the reason why we bet on stuff is because stuff is stickier year to year stuff is kind of uh and i just got a dm from max saying that stuff uh predicts era better than location so there's something about stuff that's like a straight rod and then the

person the the chaos around it is health and location. You know what I mean? And yes, for one pitch, if you can hit that little bit, that little inside, top of the inside, corner of the strike zone, at the nipples, right there, then you're golden. There's almost no hitter that's going to do much with that. If you could do that over and over again,

you could probably just do that. But, I mean, like Jake McGee exists. with that right if you could do that over and over again you could probably just do that but i mean like jake mcgee exists um but but that doesn't mean that location is a better thing to bet on overall um so anyway uh long story short john means has good stuff. He has a really bad ballpark that's hot right now. It's at its worst that it ever is. And I can't say that his pitching coach is bad, but he could have better and worse years depending on how that location works out around his stuff. And so much of the John Means future, I think, hinges on just getting out of the ballpark

regardless of the quality of the coaching that he's getting there. I keep seeing so many similarities between him and where Matthew Boyd's stock was a few years ago. The Tigers never seemed to get what they wanted for Boyd, so they held on to him. Probably a longer-term sort of mistake regardless of what you think of Boyd because they could have probably got some good young talent back a couple years ago. I don't think the Orioles are going to make that same mistake. We've talked about them a lot lately just as a rebuilding team that might see through the rebuild and end up in the 80 win range anyway. They might not be able to crack the top of the AL East. If they're going to get there,

it's going to take a few more decisions to trade some guys, means being among them and acing those trades too. That's going to be really important more decisions to trade some guys, means being among them, and acing those trades too. That's going to be really important for the future in Baltimore to make sure the couple of guys they have with control left who will bring them back more talent actually do move and actually bring back the impact guys they need. Yeah, I don't know, man. I just feel like I think these things come together kind of quickly.

I think that you could look at the Padres after that first – remember they had that first burst of movement when he first got there, Preller first got there, and then they sold everyone away. Do you think that they looked like they were in a good space? I don't think that first group of player acquisitions, I think you're referring to like the Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, Kimbrel, Padres. Yeah.

I don't think they look good, but I'm saying once those guys all left, do you think that like the Padres were in good shape? Yeah, because they still had a system that people were believing in at the time, right? They were already laying that sort of groundwork. Aren't the Orioles systems getting good ratings right now? Depends on who you ask.

I know Baseball America is really high on them, but I don't think that's necessarily a consensus opinion, even though I think everyone agrees Adley Rutschman is a long-term, decade-long impact player behind the plate. Grayson Rodriguez is one of the best pitching prospects in the minors. That's what I'm saying. What if Grayson Rodriguez turns out to be better than Means? Now you've got, like, someone who's better than Means. You've got Means.

Maybe D.L. Hall is slightly worse than Means. Okay, now you've got three legitimate Major League pitchers on top of that. And then you start looking at the group of position players they've got. You don't have the star yet, but I think that stars are really hard. Like, if you look at what people, like, I did this for the Cashman piece with Mark Carrigg. We looked at who has drafted the major leaguers that are in baseball today. And the top three teams were the Cardinals, the Rangers, and the Yankees.

Now, the Yankees have developed a star, but the Cardinals and Rangers both have had a really hard time developing a star. You know, they've packaged together all their normal guys to try and get stars, but none of them have made a star. So creating a star, I think, is somewhat lucky. It's kind of interesting because this circles back a little bit to something we were talking about on Friday and watchability and whether or not the Rays play some sort of brand of baseball

that's less enjoyable than others. I took my position that it's the same kind of baseball everybody else is playing. For a star though, there's a little bit of a beauty in the eye of the beholder sort of thing. It's kind of like developing an ace. It kind of depends on how you define a star and how you define an ace, right? Wherever you want to draw those cutoffs, but the reality is both of those things as they are most commonly defined, aces and stars, are more rare than we

want to believe. There aren't enough aces and stars to go around for every team to have multiples because if they were that common, they wouldn't be aces and stars. They'd just be very good players instead. So I just think this is one of these problems, air quotes, problems that we kind of put on ourselves collectively,

expecting there to be more elite players than there actually can be. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And so I use that point to say that I think the Orioles could be good soon because they're developing guys. Like Ryan Mountcastle, not a star, but a major leaguer. And they're going to keep finding these guys. Santander in a regular season, a guy. Cedric Mullins might not be the kind of star-esque player he is this year,

but he'll go back to being a guy. And that's all you can do is just make sure you have a guy everywhere. You know? And then try to improve upon those. I mean, that's what the Giants did, right? They're like, oh, God. Like, we have, like, five guys, and you need, like, 30 to 40 to have a good season.

And all that their general manager did was to try and improve the bottom of the roster over and over again. And now they have one of the best AAA lineups in baseball. Yeah, and in terms of position players, only Posey and Crawford have been north of two and a half wins based on fan crowd's war. Yeah, I think the Giants are a great example of this.

You wouldn't call Crawford a star. I don't think you'd call Belt a star. Posey is a star. But Rutschman could be a star on the same sort of Posey level. Doesn't this kind of get back to almost a fantasy argument too? But in real life, you could win the World Series with two aces and just kind of three decent guys in the back of the rotation if your decent back-end guys

don't get blown up in the postseason and your aces do ace things. But you could also win with a bunch of threes if your threes are just consistently good and your offense shows up. There's so many ways to win. Fantasy, for the most part, is more like regular season ball.

You're more likely to win being sort of Billy Bean, right? Where you're just like, get the undervalued guys, make sure you don't have any holes. That's been sort of my process is buy innings pitched, buy plate appearances, make sure you accrue the most counting stats, just make sure you don't have any holes, make sure you account for everything.

And you don't always need to have that breakout star to compete and to win. It's not quite like postseason ball where I think the stars matter a little bit more. Right. And that style you described, that's more the Ariel Cohen, Jeff Zimmerman, Larry Schechter style of play. Whereas I take the hair on fire, let's just build the stars and scrubs. Let's hit on those scrubs and build the super team. And it works sometimes, but those guys win more than I do. So clearly I am –

It is fun though. Your way can be more fun. I do have a lot of fun. I don't know how much fun those guys are having. I think when they win, they're having plenty of fun. I think when they fall just short, they're not having as much fun. guys are having i think when they win they're having plenty of fun i think when they fall just short they're not having as much fun but yeah but it's also like building um building on the back of like adam engel and kevin kiermeier and like you know like uh just uh just guys that will play

it's a little bit less fun than being like but i had wonder franco in his first breakout year you know i mean the the smartest possible way to do it is to build the balanced approach, then just take the right shots cheap with your bench and still get the scrubs right, but then just don't overpay for stars. That's the answer. It's like 80% what those guys do or 90% what those guys do and like 10% to 20% what I've been doing. So if I can find the common ground

between those two approaches, then I think I can have even more sustained success and be a pain in those guys' butts collectively in the years ahead. Try to reel off a stretch where I win a bunch of leagues against them because they're all great players. And I think that's a huge part of why they have the success that they do. One more question to get to, a more topic to get to rather, but it's both actually, because it's beer of the month making its triumphant return after, geez, a two to three month layoff.

How has beer of the month gone by the wayside? It was beer of the week when the show started. And now it's like beer of the quarter, beer of the semester. It's coming back. As part of field trips and West Coast DVR, beer of the month is making a triumphant return. Some of the stuff is a little bit easier in the off season

when there's less stuff going on. Also that. But beer of the month was a question from Michael because it came with a recommendation as well. And his question was about Seth Beer, because back in 2015, and Michael lives in Atlanta, Seth Beer was a really big deal in that area as a high schooler and mashed as a hitter, pitched really well in high school, graduated early, went to Clemson, was college baseball's player of the year as a freshman, and now he's stuck behind Christian Walker in Arizona.

So what's the deal with Seth Beer, first and foremost? Is he worth a $1 stash in Auto New and other deep leagues sort of looking ahead to next season and how maybe Arizona will open up a spot for him and see what he can do with a large amount of playing time? I thought there was a baseball player. Yes, there he is. Brett Pill.

Oh, no. I thought it was Pills. I thought it was Pills. Just put an S on there. I thought you were going to go to Joey Pancake. Joey Pancake. No, Seth Beer, I think he has a chance. Christian Walker's taking a big step back. And Beer combines good strikeout rates with excellent power.

He's done it all the way up to AAA. I think he's running out of reasons not to have him in the big leagues. So I would actually expect him to get a fair amount of play appearances next year. I don't know if he'll be up right in the beginning of the season because the team seems kind of bad. But, you know, if they play a little better than usual, see him in May. They really, really should not wait on him. And this is not the service time thing.

It's a he'll be 25 years old. Let him play. Like like just play him don't make him wait until he's 32 to become a free agent don't be clowns about this how much how much do you care about like making sure you have his 32 year old season he may be one of these guys that doesn't necessarily have a super long career right he's a first baseman might still be a big leaguer at the end of that time but probably won't be a guy that you're even worried about keeping on your roster if all the rules are still the same as they are now and he's a 10 million dollar player i you know this dh thing could be very interesting for beer actually it could be his projection is actually pretty similar to christian walker's already for what it's worth right and i think the one thing that the

diamondbacks don't want to do is lose uh christian walker if he's an actual asset you know what i mean that's what teams don't really like they really don't want to release a guy that might still be good you know so uh but if there's that extra roster spot and there's a place that that he can play uh then I think you start the season with both Walker and Beer playing every day. And if Walker doesn't get it back, then you release him when you get a roster crunch, when you're a better team, right?

Yeah, I think with Walker and Beer, they can coexist in a universal DH situation. And that probably makes a lot of sense. Walker will be arbitration eligible for the first time this winter. So it's not like price is a major deterrent. So if they see him as a rebound candidate for next year, someone that's going to come back and maybe pop in their 20 or 25 homers again, great.

Keep them around for the year and see what happens. It's not the end of the world. If it doesn't work out, you can just play him a little bit less. I think he's probably better than he's been so far this year. I actually think Christian Walker rebound makes a little bit of sense. But I think also like if there is no DH, I do get your argument about just play beer, but I think if there's no DH, they'll want to start the season with Walker playing every day to see if maybe it was just a one-year blip, but they will maybe only give him. If he starts next season hitting like he is right now,

then he would be a release candidate. I'm going to go ahead and put Seth Beer on my Draft Champions League bottom of the list range for sure. Yeah, he's a good Draft Champions pickup. It's going to be there. For what it's worth, he was playing in the outfield prior to this season. He has not played a single inning in the outfield at Reno this year. So they do not see Seth Beer as an outfielder. They see Seth Beer as a first baseman and as a DH. So keep note of that. There actually is a beer recommendation here in this email.

Let me grab that real quick. It's a beer of the week from Michael. Michael says it's a New England IPA called Zero Zero from Arches Brewing in Hapeville, Georgia. Hapeville, not on many people's top five places to visit around Atlanta, but it's a growing community, and if you're flying in and out of Atlanta's main airport, it's a quick stop before your flight.

The brewery does crisp, clean lagers and ales with a heavy focus on the water to brew high quality. Everything highly recommended. I have not had anything from Arches. I also don't know the Atlanta area well enough to know how close. It sounds like it is pretty close to the airport.

I don't actually know it that well. Let me see here. It sounds like it might be near Stone Mountain. That's where you come in from Hartsfield. Well, I've got a friend that moved to Atlanta recently, so maybe there's a beer swap in order at some point. Oh. No, it's not so far as Stone Mountain.

Oh, Heyville. It's by College Park. East Point baby oh I know where that is that's a little bit on the southern part for me it's like I was in Atlanta I was more like a Decatur

Midtown Morningside Lenox Ansley, Ansley was my where I grew up. Ansley Park. And then I hung out a lot down in Fayetteville and Zebulon, Georgia. Zebulon. I've seen that somewhere.

Is there a Zebulon in North Carolina too? Griffin. I don't know. Yeah, there is. There's a Zebulon in North Carolina. Why are there two Zebulons? I'll figure that out later. The Zebulon in Georgia has like 3,000 people in it,

so it's surprising that you heard that name before. It says 4,400 as of 2010 in the North Carolina Zebulon. It'd be kind of cool if the two Zebulons played like a high school football game against each other. I just, you know, once you hear it flew over to each other. I want it to be on the Ocho. Or just Met in Atlanta. They could just meet halfway. If I draw

the map. Somewhere in the southeast corner of Tennessee, maybe. I don't know. No, that was bad geography, but don't worry about it. Drawing the map in my head, I'm like... Yeah, you put North Carolina somewhere weird. worry about it. I draw the map in my head. I'm like, yeah, you put North Carolina somewhere weird. Wait a minute. I'm going to check

that out while you share your beer of the week. Alright, my beer of the week is Monkey Space Mafia. Monkey Space Mafia. Monkey Space Mafia? Monkey Space Mafia. Yes. I believe that is. I got a picture of it here. I'm looking for it.

Monkey Space Mafia. Yes, I believe that is. I got a picture of it here. I'm looking for it. Monkey Space. Space Monkey Mafia. Space Monkey Mafia. Not Monkey Space Mafia. Is that in the We Didn't Start the Fire lyrics? I don't know. It's got to be a reference to something. What is Space Monkey Mafia?

Wait a minute. We didn't start the fire. Wikipedia. Wait, wait. See? It all comes back around. It isn't We Didn't Start the Fire? Yeah, it appears to be.

We Didn't Start the Fire lyrics. Oh, yeah. And then there's a guy who made a song called Space Monkey Mafia sampling Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire using that line. So, yeah. Wow. Good job. I don't dig on Billy Joel, so I had no chance of getting that one. I don't dig on Billy Joel either.

I'm just familiar with his music, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Thank you. Thank with his music, unfortunately. Unfortunately. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay. Here come a bunch of one-star reviews for this. I also don't like Bruce Springsteen, so just keep throwing them in there. No, I'm not.

I'm not big on Bruce Springsteen either. But anyway, I'm on this beer. It's from Moonraker. I like Moonraker. They're in Auburn and in California here. But the point that I wanted to bring up is it's a cold IPA. And for those of you that think hazies are mushy and chewy, this cold IPA is super crisp. And basically, you treat it a little bit more like a lager.

You use some corn in the brewing process. I think you cold ferment it as opposed to, it's like kind of you lager it. So it has some aspects of a lager. It's pretty crisp, but it still has the kind of sweetness and hoppiness. I would describe it as kind of like a crisp west coast ipa in a way uh which is actually really nice to have uh even if you like hazies because

even if you like hazies you don't want every beer you ever drink ever again to be all hazy yeah they don't all have to be the same i I would say my selection, which comes from Alvarado Street Brewing, which is now accessible to me when I go even to a grocery store, which is actually pretty amazing. It's the Estrada, which is a little more of that typical hazy IPA, but I would not describe it as mushy. I think it's a little more on the crisp side. I dig this one quite a bit. I'm going to bring one over your way here in the next little while. I definitely get the mango on it. I like when the writeup has flavors in it that I can't taste because it makes me feel like I can't taste things the way I should. I'm getting the mango. I'm not getting white grape. Can you really taste white grape unless you're drinking white grape juice?

Is that a flavor note that a normal person can pick up? Yeah. Some of these things have must in them. Yeah, must. Okay, sure. So it smells like an old closet? Or tastes like that? Yeah, supposedly that's like dried grape skin or something. So it's like the

essence of grape. Sometimes I think of wine when they talk about grapes. I think, oh yeah, I guess I get a little bit of a whiny thing going on here. I guess if they were doing the Brutai PA or something, maybe I could pick up some white grape there. But I couldn't in this one. I thought this was a little more tropical than white grapes. But as you've said time and time again,

you really can't go wrong with Alvarado Street. I don't think I've ever had a beer from them that I didn't enjoy. So I highly recommend this one. Strata's cool. Caught my eye. The art caught my eye because it's got like the old arcade game box. It kind of looks like a Pac-Man machine maybe on the front of the can. Gotta love Pac-Man.

So beer of the month is back. Hopefully it's beer of every other week or something along those lines in the near future. Sweet deal right now on subscriptions, by the way. those lines in the near future. Sweet deal right now on subscriptions, by the way. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic and you're not just seething with rage about how we feel about Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, you can

get 50% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. 50% off is actually one of the best deals we do throughout the year, so be sure to sign up for that. Get all of Eno's stuff. Get the occasional things I write. The two early fantasy baseball rankings for 2022? Yeah, those are about a month away. Those are coming. I'm. The two early fantasy baseball rankings for 2022. Yeah, those are about a month away.

Those are coming. I'm going to start working on those in the background. I'm already looking forward to that because something is clearly wrong with me. It's not my taste in music. Some of the validation stuff that I'm talking about with stuff and location will be up on the site tomorrow. I'm going to look at stuff and location and pitching plus numbers for debut

young, young debut rookie, young pitcher type people. So I'm gathering all that. That's what everyone always asks for, you know, so I'm giving the people what they want. Awesome. And on a related positive note, we got more questions we're going to answer in the next few episodes. I know

we're probably a few weeks behind on some emails thanks to my move. I apologize for that. I'm finally done building furniture and getting the ass on a daily basis

which means I can actually dig further into the emails and catch up on them. So if you send us an email... Guaranteed way to get the ass is build furniture. A hundred percent. Like the stuff

we've been ordering, we're not getting fancy furniture. We're getting very basic furniture. Very basic furniture means you're using dowels and those little metal things that hold like the screws that go in. You like turn, you twist them to like lock it in place. The little metal, they're like pegs with a screw on the end. There's those two.

Lots of those in my life right now. Allen wrench? All the Allen wrenches. I have the super Allen wrench here though. I have the Allen wrench. In case you lose the Allen wrench that came with the product i have like a 12 piece it's like a swiss army yes yeah it's a very nice piece to have so thank you to my father-in-law for sending that my way because the entire world was pretty much built with allen wrenches as i've learned why did people decide that we have screws we have screws with like two

two heads on right like couldn't we just go with those i think it's because there are a surprising number of people in this world who do not want have or have tools like they just don't have it so the tools got to come in the box an allen wrench you can give it to them yeah without having to give them a whole a whole tool right cost three cents to send an Allen wrench with the pieces, so just an engineering twist for keeping it easy for people that don't want to buy tools. Hey, look, I don't mind using the tools. You get better stuff when you use actual tools. I am a tool.

Yeah, same. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.